
20
SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSON QUARTERLY
us. After Artaxerxes, reigned his son, Xerxes, two months, and
Sogdian, seven months; but their reign is not reckoned apart
in summing up the years of the kings, but is included in the
forty, or forty-one years' reign of Artaxerxes omit these nine
mouths, and the precise reign of . Artaxerxes will be thirty-nine
years and three months. And therefore since his reign ended
in the beginning of winter, An. J. P. 4289 (B. c. 425), it began
between midsummer and autumn An. J. P. 4250 (B. c. 464).
The same thing I gather also thus: Cambyses began his reign
in spring, An. J. P. 4185 (B. c. 529), and reigned eight years,
including the five months of Smerdis; and then Darius Hystaspes
began in spring, An. J. P. 4193 (B. c. 521), and reigned thirty- .
six years, by the unanimous consent of all chronologers.
The
reigns of these two kings are determined by three eclipses of
the moon, observed at Babylon, and recorded by Ptolemy; so
that it can not be disputed.'
One was in the seventh year of
Cambyses, An. J. P. 4191 (B. C. 523), July 16, at eleven at
night; another in the twentieth year of Darius, An. J. P. 4212
(B. C. 502), November 19, at 11:45 at night; a third in the
thirty-first year of Darius, An. J. P. 4223 (B. c. 491), April
25, at 11:30 at. night. By these eclipses, and the prophecies
of Haggai and Zechary compared together,
it is manifest that
his years began after the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh
Jewish month, and before the twenty-fifth day of April, and by
consequence "about March. Xerxes, therefore, began in' spring,
An. J. P. 4229 (B. C. 485), for Darius died in the fifth year
after the battle of Marathon, as Herodotus (lib. 7) and Plutarch
mention; and that battle was in October, An. J. P. 4224 (B. c.
490), ten years before the battle of Salamis. Xerxes, therefore,
began within less than a year after October, An. J. P. 4228
(B. C. 486), suppose in the spring following; for he spent
his first five years, and something more, in preparations for
his expedition against the Greeks; and this expedition was in
the time of the Olympic games, An. 1, Olymp. 75, Calliade
Athenis Archonte, twenty-eight years after his regifuge and con-
sulship of the first counsel, Junius Brutus, Anno Urbis Conditm
273 '(3. C. 481), Fabio and Furio Coss. The passage of Xerxes'
army over the Hellespont began in the end of the fourth year
of the seventy-fourth Olympiad; that is, in June, An. J. P.. 4234
(B. c. 480), and took up one month; and in autumn, three
months after, on the full moon, the sixteenth day of the month
of Munychion, Was the battle of Salamis, and a little after that
an eclipse of the sun, which, by the calculation
;
fell, on October
"This Gospel of the kingdom Shall be preached in all The world
for' a witness
unto
all nations; and then shall the end come.'.'